A team comprising Jingwei Zhou, Xing Rong, and other researchers from the Spin Magnetic Resonance Laboratory at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) has introduced a scalable architecture tailored for dark matter search. This architecture is built upon superconducting qubit systems. The team has also successfully carried out a proof-of-principle experimental demonstration on a multi-qubit superconducting quantum chip. Their research results were published on October 29 in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters, under the title "Scalable Architecture for Dark Photon Searches: Superconducting-Qubit Proof of Principle."

Current astronomical and cosmological observations suggest that dark matter constitutes roughly 25% of the universe's total mass. Among the various candidates for dark matter, ultralight bosonic dark matter—such as axions and dark photons—has garnered considerable interest. Nevertheless, international efforts to detect ultralight dark matter have encountered a significant challenge: reconciling the need for a broad measurement range with the requirement for high detection sensitivity.

To tackle this issue, the USTC research team harnessed micro- and nanofabrication techniques to integrate multiple frequency-tunable superconducting qubits onto a single chip. This integration has resulted in a scalable architecture specifically designed for dark matter search. This novel architecture facilitates the simultaneous, high-sensitivity scanning and detection of dark matter across multiple energy regions. By doing so, it potentially overcomes the long-standing challenge of balancing measurement range and sensitivity.

The three-qubit superconducting quantum chip, which was designed and fabricated by the USTC team, is capable of searching for dark photons in three distinct energy regions concurrently. Moreover, it establishes the most stringent constraints on dark photon-photon coupling within these energy ranges. The experimental findings indicate a significant improvement, with bounds that are 1-2 orders of magnitude tighter than those previously derived from astronomical observations.

This groundbreaking work not only highlights the promising applications of superconducting qubits in particle physics but also lays a solid foundation for future dark matter detection endeavors. These future efforts aim to achieve a wider mass range coverage and higher precision in dark matter detection.